Coffy wrote:

QUOTE:
This is a good place for a question I've had about LA geography. Are places like Encino or Reseda or whatever, which I'd thought of as discrete suburban towns, actually part of the city proper? This seems to cause confusion to the writers of Cold Case, because they'll have the Philly PD handle cases that seem to be in the suburbs, which would definitely not happen here.

Those two in particular are neighborhoods in Los Angeles, not their own incorporated cities, so sounds like that's where problems like that come from, Coffy. There are some places that are actual independent, incorporated cities (Beverly Hills, Santa Monica), but are surrounded by LA, and just tend to get grouped in with City of Los Angeles proper. West Hollywood is its own city, for example, but Hollywood is just an area of Los Angeles. Some LA neighborhoods are so distinct people think that they're their own cities--Venice, San Pedro--but they aren't, though the post office will deliver mail addressed to Venice, or San Pedro.

Thanks, WOM. LA is also very much a "city of neighborhoods", though like I said, people don't always agree on just what those neighborhoods are called. The City of Los Angeles has an official map with district names, and you can see the signs posted (this Flickr group trying to get them all), but those tend to get ignored. A neighborhood I used to live in was named Crestview, but people called it the Cadillac district, or Palms, or Pico-Robertson (for nearby streets), or "Beverlywood adjacent", a nice real-estate technique of trying to link a somewhat marginal area to a well-known nice area nearby . "Beverly Hills adjacent" is a classic example.

I like "Property Virgins" more than "House Hunters," a similar show, because I find it more realistic--there are shows where people don't get the house, they get dicked around by the sellers when they see there's a lot of interest, and they don't always end up happy. Plus, I kind of like Sandra Rinomato, the realtor/host.